Christmas shoppers can expect more deals this week than on Black Friday

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• High street and online retailers are expected to offer more promotions next week than they did over Black Friday.
• Analysis by PwC suggests most major retailers will offer discounts for last minute Christmas shoppers.

LONDON — Good news for last minute Christmas shoppers: high street and online retailers are expected to offer more promotions this week than they did over November’s Black Friday weekend.

Accounting firm PwC found online and high street retailers are likely to slash prices for products in the week before Christmas, after having upped prices at the beginning of December to preserve profit margins.

“As we rapidly approach Christmas itself, we are already seeing an uptick in promotional activity as retailers try to attract customers through their doors and clear festive stock, particularly as last week’s snow and ice put a dent on high street footfall across large parts of the country,” said Lisa Hooker, consumer markets leader at PwC.

PwC has collected data in November and December on shop promotions for leading department and chain stores across the UK for the last seven years.

Here’s the chart:

PwC

Last year, 98% of online retailers surveyed had some kind of homepage promotion in the week before Christmas. Although PwC does not expect the same level to be reached this year, the report said shoppers should expect to see “more bargains” in the coming week.

The number of promotions is expected to exceed those seen over this year’s Black Friday, when 84% of online retailers and 75% of high street stores offered some kind of promotion, a similar level to last year.

“Our research shows that several of the retailers that did not previously participate in Black Friday did offer some kind of promotion this year — confirming the place of the American tradition in the British shopping calendar,” said Lisa Hooker, consumer markets leader at PwC.